| acam's Last 5 Game Reviews (view last 25) |
NBA Hangtime
05-22-18 02:23 PM
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NBA Hangtime (PS1) Review
Review: NBA Hangtime (PS1) A while ago, I reviewed NBA Hangtime for the Nintendo 64. While I personally own that game, I don’t own the PlayStation version. I can only play it via Vizzed Retro Game Room. That needs to be mentioned, as I can only grade what I played on the site. Graphics The graphics for this port are identical to the original arcade game. Like the rest of the ports, the whole game is particularly based on the “Maximum Hangtime” revision of the game. There really isn’t much to say at this point. The graphics are arcade perfect. Sound This is where this port diverges from both its siblings and progenitor. For example, “In the Zone” (the main theme of the game) only appears on the player and team select screens. All quarters in the games have what seem to be two remixes of the first and third quarter themes of the arcade game. Most glaring of all, the post game music lacks its theme, unlike all the other ports I am personally familiar with. With that said, every other sound from the announcer and other sounds are spot on. Replay Value /Depth This game has a lot of value as a pick-up-and-play game. As a link in the NBA Jam chain, it has the same style of play: 2 on 2 arcade with lots of flips, dunks, and fire. The ingenious formula is in full force here, though it is better in short bursts than anything else. Summary Despite a few issues regarding sound, the game is a wonderful port of a classic arcade sports game.
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NBA Jam Tournament Edition
07-13-16 05:33 PM
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NBA Jam: Tournament Edition (PS1) Review
Review: NBA Jam – Tournament Edition (PS1) This series announces its long-awaited return with a review of NBA Jam: Tournament Edition for the Sony PlayStation. Released on September 4, 1995 for the console in question, this port does, in a way, stand out among its peers. Anyway, let’s take a look… Graphics In this reviewer’s opinion, this version of NBA Jam has the most polished graphics of all the home ports (excluding PC and Jaguar). This is evident from the first boot-up of the game as the pixilation present in the Genesis and SNES versions is all but gone here, allowing for a (mostly) smooth presentation. The graphics on-court look just about arcade-perfect as well. Even the digitized player sprites look more recognizable in-game than their 16-bit counterparts. Sound On the audio front, the sound quality is pretty top-notch. Every catcall from the announcer is clearly understandable, as are the various noises you’d expect from an NBA Jam game. In terms of the OST, though, it’s hit or miss. Simply put, it’s “the 90s”, through and through. The quality of the tracks is, again, top-notch. Gameplay To get this out in the open out front: prepare for about five to ten seconds of loading transitioning to/from a game and between quarters. They pepper this game, unlike any other version I’ve played (that is, versions on the arcade, SNES, Genesis, GB, GG). Aside from that, this is NBA Jam. You pick a team from the 1995-96 NBA season and jump right into some fast-paced, 2-on-2 arcade basketball action. This game is pick-up-and-play by nature. However, mastery of the game depends on how you are able to manage and capitalize on the skills and abilities of players on a given team. To note something else, the timer, on its normal setting seems slower than other versions, which is worth keeping in mind. Replay Value With many secrets to unlock, reasonably short game lengths, and teams to t... Read the rest of this Review
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Street Fighter Alpha 2
01-02-16 03:00 PM
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Street Fighter Alpha 2 (SNES) Review
Street Fighter Alpha 2 (SNES) Review Overview As many of you no doubt know by now, the latest incarnation of the long-running Street Fighter franchise is soon to be upon us. As a matter of fact, the fifth numbered installment comes out in about a month. I figure that in the spirit of that (as well as just being bored, I guess), I decided to take a look back at an interesting iteration in the franchise as a whole. Street Fighter Alpha 2 was released not only in the arcades, but on quite a number of consoles over the course of 1996. I’m sure many people know of the PSX port, as it’s the one that is considered by many to be a classic of their childhoods. There is, however, one port that tends to get overlooked: the Super Nintendo version, and that’s what we’ll be looking at today. Graphics Graphically, this game is, by the standards and limitations of the system, pretty good. Everything from the intro to the stages themselves are actually quite lovingly recreated based on their arcade counterparts. The characters themselves look…okay, certainly not as clean as their counterparts. I’m probably comparing apples to oranges in a way, as no port of that era was arcade-perfect, but it’s just the slightest bit off putting. Not much else to say here. Moving on… Audio there’s no easy way to say this. The chatter and basic sound effects in this game so muffled that it sounds like everyone is pretty much talking (and fighting) through a pillow, and the sticks out incredibly badly with the announcer. You can tell what they’re saying most of the time, and most of it is limited to just a few phrases and grunts here or there, but it’s certainly noticeable. They try to re-create the themes from the original game, and they do an okay job, in their defense, but they just come off as rather cheap knockoffs that are comparable to their original versions. It’s not that they’re bad per se, they’re just... Read the rest of this Review
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Lakers vs Celtics & NBA Playoffs
10-24-15 03:07 PM
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Lakers vs. Celtics and the NBA Playoffs
Lakers vs. Celtics and the NBA Playoffs (GEN) Review Overview Lakers Versus Celtics and the NBA Playoffs was released on the Sega Genesis in 1991. An earlier version of it was released for MS-DOS in 1989. It was the first game to be released in the NBA Playoffs series of games made by EA. This series, of course, would predate the NBA Live series of games. Aside from a few differences in terms of rosters and obvious graphical differences, this game is rather similar to its PC counterpart. I don’t really have a lengthy personal back story with this game: I just kind of found it on Vizzed one day. Let’s see if it holds up… Graphics Speaking purely from a graphical standpoint, you can tell that this was an early Sega Genesis game. Most of the colors in the game, from the opening splash to details on the court have a sort of old, washed out feel. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but I’m just saying that it’s worthy of note. For what everything does though, it’s fairly serviceable. Considering the category that we’re on, I won’t go into the menus here. Anyway, other than that little nitpick, everything kind of does its job in terms of identifying things. You can tell the basketball is a basketball, the net is a net, and so on. Strangely enough, the game doesn’t have center court logos. That would be added in games down the line. Not much else to say here… Sound For what little actual audio exists in this game, it’s, again, quite serviceable. I actually like the menu theme as well as the in game background music. All three of these tracks are very 90s style tracks loaded with that ever present Genesis twang, but they do their job in terms of getting you pumped for the action as well as keeping you going. While the net sounds are kind of papery, the sound effects themselves really aren’t that bad, and I’m sure that for the time that they were groundbreaking. Not much else to sa... Read the rest of this Review
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NBA Hangtime
10-12-15 10:43 AM
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NBA Hangtime (N64) Review
NBA Hangtime (N64) Review Overview NBA Hangtime for the N64 was released on January 17, 1997 in the US and on September 1st of that year in Europe. For me this game is an interesting beast, as I have a bit of history with it. It was one of the original six games I got for the N64 my parents bought for me for my 11th birthday (2006). I admit I didn’t like it at first, but it grew on me over time. To this day, I still own (and occasionally play) this game. In this review, I’d like to set all personal bias aside and review this game from a purely analytical standpoint. Graphics From a graphical standpoint, while this game doesn’t blow me away (more because of me being spoiled by the pretty pictures of modern gaming than anything being wrong with the game itself), it does look quite nice for an early N64 game. The menus are simple and are more or less designed to get you into the game as quickly as possible. All 29 teams around at the time are present, including Vancouver and Toronto. It should be noted that this version of the game bears more similarities not to the original version of the arcade game released in 1996, but its update, dubbed Maximum Hangtime, which was released later on. The in-game graphics are near-identical, for example. To this end, all of the graphics look remarkably faithful to that arcade version. Sound For some, the audio might be considered a mixed bag. On the one hand, every one of the four tracks in the game (including the game’s main theme, “What’cha Gonna Do?”) plays at appropriate times faithful to the arcade game. This runs in contrast to the PS1 version, which exchanges a couple songs appearing in their proper place (ex.: the post-game theme) in exchange for higher quality audio and some extended remixes of the music that is there. The audio here, especially the announcer chatter, comes in a bit muffled. It could be chalked up as a constraint of working with the cartridge-based N64 technol... Read the rest of this Review
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